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Video Artist Sputniko! On Japan, Creativity And Her New Gig At The MIT Media Lab

TOKYO — She strode into our classroom like a Manga character wearing a black miniskirt, a white leather jacket and plastic sunglasses atop her head. The dark, studded handbag she toted matched her edgy, angular haircut; both contrasting with a playful expression. These weren’t the only reasons the artist who goes by the name Sputniko! (real name: Hiromi Ozaki) jolted our curiosity.

Before long, she was snapping pictures of us on her iPhone and flashing a mischievous grin along with a peace sign as we snapped photos back and started conversing with her on social media channels. All of this happened before she started telling us about her fast journey in the art world on three continents. If art is about engaging conversation, raising questions and spurring creative dialogue then Sputniko! is a budding master of the genre. She’s also hard to define. Bjork? Yvonne Brill? Marina Abromovic? Lady Gaga? Nope. Kind of. Not really.

As a member of the Cool Japan advisory committee, she was partly visiting the Berlin School of Creative Leadership module in Asia to tell us about Japan’s evolving role in the creative industries. We also heard from Takaaki Umezawa, a director at consulting firm A.T. Kearney Inc., about Japan’s ambitions to evolve beyond industrial and technological prowess by building on its successful fashion, food and creative brands such as Muji, Uniqlo and Ippudo. The country is examining ways to export some of its pop music stars, its manga culture and food prowess.

As an emerging player in Japan’s creative industries, Sputniko! represents a bridge between Britain, Japan and the US. As part of her final project as a graduate art student at the Royal College of Art in London, she came up with a “menstruation machine” that men can strap on to experience the joys of stomach cramps and trickling blood where the sun doesn’t rise. Taking the idea further, she invented a gender-bending character named Takashi who uses the machine in a rock music video (which Sputniko! wrote, starred in and directed with some crowd-sourced funding and production help). Sputniko!, who studied math and computer science at Imperial College London as an undergraduate, revels in the questions that work induced and which made it web viral on several continents.

“People were talking about whether you could design something that fosters empathy,” she said. “Others wondered if I was a Japanese guy who wanted to experience menstruation.”

Hiromi Ozaki (Photo credit: Joi)

Other early works included a video about a girl named “Crowbot Jenny” who uses a mechanical crow Sputniko! and collaborators built that can digitally speak to actual crows. “When I managed to have a one-on-one conversation with a crow, I got very excited,” she said. “I created this character Jenny who doesn’t feel at ease talking to her girlfriends… So she decides to start reading different [academic] papers about crows and build this crowbot.”

She says she wanted to create a discussion about nature, animals and technology. “I want to infiltrate the popular culture and have more discussion outside the museum,” she told us. “Japan is an interesting place to infiltrate the pop culture. The pop culture in Japan is very diverse. High art could be included… So many things could be almost pop culture in Japan.”

This is the kind of work that quickly landed Sputniko! in exhibitions in New York’s MOMA and several top museums in Tokyo. Now, fashion brands such as Louis Vuitton are collaborating with her on hand bags, iPhone cases and t-shirts. Fashion magazines in Tokyo are following her work in art, fashion and feminism. She wrote a self-help book for teen-age girls in Japan. And she recently landed a gig at MIT in Boston as an assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab, where she will collaborate with engineering students on art and engineering projects.

While some might criticize her work as too self-serving in an Andy Warhol or Lady Gaga vein, fans suggest the appeal goes deeper. She playfully uses video, installation and performance as mediums to cleverly encounter issues of feminism, Japanese anime culture, punk and pop music, science, technology, nature and global issues. And she’s doing this through social media in ways both similar and different than other emerging video artists such as Ryan Trecartin.

After watching her videos and hearing her explain her work, I overheard one creative designer and strategist in our group say, “That was the most inspiring thing I’ve encountered in two years.”

Here are seven questions she fielded from Berlin School EMBA participants after showing us her work:

Q – How did you acquire this name, Sputniko! ?

S – It’s a high school nickname because I’m tall and half-British. Some of my friends said that because I’m tall and I like science that I must be Russian. In university, I started a band and called it “Sputniko.” Then, I started making these objects. I could never change my name since then. I went to [meetings with] the Japanese government with this name and politicans have a hard time pronouncing my name. Sometimes I wish I had a more serious name in these situations. I can’t change it now. I’ve had it for so many years.

Q – When did you move back to Japan?

S – I came to Japan in 2010. Then, I moved to the US in 2013. I was a TV personality at the MIT Media Lab. I was interviewing Nicholas Negroponte, who created the media lab. I thought I’d really like to be in this space. They heard about my work through my MOMA collaboration. So Nicholas said, “We are looking for an arts faculty.” It’s a new adventure for me.

English: Presentation by Nicholas Negroponte to 4,400 midshipmen and invited guests. Photo taken by official event photographer. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Q – How do you balance your art projects now while also being a professor?

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